This invention generally relates to mobile communications, and more specifically, to serving time critical information to mobile devices.
Mobile communications has become very widespread, and its use will almost certainly increase substantially. A variety of devices, such as cell phones, smart phones, and personal digital assistants, are used to receive many types of data and information such as telephone calls, music and videos, including television programming.
Mobile communication devices are increasingly being used in connection with the purchase of goods and services. The devices are used actually to purchase goods and services and also to receive information, including advertisements and coupons, about goods and services.
Many advertisements/offers are time critical—if they are released to the public too early, competitive advantage may be lost. In the United states, for example, the Friday after Thanksgiving, referred to as Black Friday, is one such example, where retailers go to great lengths to keep their advertisements and offers secret. Maintaining this secrecy, however, creates a distribution problem. In order for physical advertisements and coupons to reach customers, the advertisements and coupons should be distributed in advance. This advance distribution, though, creates a risk that the secrecy of the advertisement, or a related marketing strategy, may be lost, either by accident or through improper use.
This advance distribution problem is true of traditional media and holds true in the digital domain as well. This problem—the risk of losing secrecy or confidentiality as a result of the need to distribute information in advance—exists in many other areas as well, such as revealing a company's quarterly reports, expert picks on new video games and smart phone apps.
In all these examples, the content provider and the network service providers face the challenge of delivering digital content to millions of users at the appointed release time—neither too early nor too late. This results in peak traffic/flash floods at the network service provider (in particular, bandwidth constrained wireless/mobile/cellular networks); however, pushing digital content ahead of time to the users violates the times release constraint as mandated by the content provider.